Well, it’s a good thing I basked in the sunlight a few weeks ago, because the progress outlook has been generally dim since my article was accepted. There have been additional rejections to swallow (I’m getting fairly practiced at doing so now), so there hasn’t been very much of an exciting nature to add.

I did have one glimmer of hope pop up on the horizon, when my dream agent actually requested a partial review of my latest manuscript, but sadly, today, she informed me it didn’t draw her in. Ah, me–back to the drawing board.

In an effort to get right back in the saddle (see earlier post), I have been writing like a fiend this morning. I worked up interview questions for an article I’ll be submitting later this summer and submitted a couple of modest essays and my first short story to other possible forums for publication.

That’s the part of this whole business that I think I find so dispiriting: the hoops to jump through to get someone to look at your work are very time-consuming. If I spend the time working on that end of the business, it takes time away from the creative part of it, which is where I really want to be spending my time and energies. But I guess you gotta do what you gotta do.

It’s been hard finding the time (and solitude) to write creatively anyway, as it is, what with the kids home from school for the summer now. I was always a believer in year-round schooling, but my support only increases during the summer months when I realize just how much I’ve enjoyed having the extra time to write.

When I’m with my kids, I feel guilty that I’m not writing and working on something that will help me achieve my goals. When I’m writing, I feel guilty that I’m not spending time with my children–I know, it’s the classic conundrum of the working parent, but since I don’t actually earn a paycheck at my “work”, I think my guilt at burying myself in it from time to time, “optional” as it is, may be heavier than your average guilt load.

I hope that someday, my kids will not look back on these days of summer sun and a closed office door between me and them with enormous amounts of resentment.

How did J.K. Rowling manage it as a mother-writer? Everyone’s heard of how she would write with her baby in a carrier at her feet–that’s fine, for a little while, but what about when they’re mobile, and verbal (very verbal, in the case of my offspring)? What, then?

Oh, well, enough pity partying–if any writer-parents out there want to respond and pass along their sage “How-I-Do-It” advice, I’d be happy to hear it.

In the meantime, write on, write on.